Voters get “I voted” stickers on Election Day. I think journalists should get “I survived” stickers.

Election Day is a long day of hurry-up-and-wait for journalists. It’s like Christmas, but you can’t open your presents until the end of the day. You’re waiting, waiting, waiting to see who is going to win before you can get too far into writing stories or designing pages.

This year’s election was exciting in Maryland. While it was clear President Barack Obama would carry the state, the national outcome of the presidential race was in doubt well past 11 p.m.

And Maryland had two hot-button questions on the ballot: legalizing same-sex marriages and expanding state-sanctioned gambling. There was no way to know how those questions would turn out until the results started coming in. (Both passed.)

After working until 2:45 a.m., I turned around and was back in the newsroom at about 8 a.m. to help polish things off for the print edition. I also was a guest on “Maryland Morning” on WYPR radio, talking about the election. Here’s a link to the show.

Here are a few quick cell phone photos of what my Election Day looked like.